The Ship Model Forum

In the last few months Pit-Road has released JMSDF versions of the NEO line of accessory sets, NE-10 for modern ships and NE-11 for the 80's-90's generation. They have a very high level of detail and a much greater level of fidelity than previously released parts. Each pack also includes two SH-60J helicopters - this is currently the only way to get these excellent new molds, the equal of the SH-60K's included in the most modern Pit-Road kits. Some of the parts in the NE-10 set use slide molds.

Previous Pit-Road JMSDF equipment sets were the original ones included with kits starting around 1985, an updated set from around 1995 (released as the E-1 set), and a set for early JMSDF ships which was first used in 2010.

Here are some pictures comparing the new parts with the older equivalents to give you an idea of the improvements:

Here the Phalanx from NE-10 is compared with an older version and one from the FineMolds Nano Dred series (there is a Phalanx in the 1985 set too, but it is utterly fictional). The new one is far superior, but you probably need to extend the barrel a bit. The Nano Dred seems a bit big. You can see the triple torpedo launcher from NE-10 is far better than the cartoonish older one (all previous designs were identical).


The new enclosed 3-inch gun turret captures the shape better and has much more detail:


The new 7.9m boat has a rudder and lacks the massive "cable" holes but for some reason has some weird grain and an ejection pin mark at the bottom:


The new Bofors ASW rocket launcher is the only one that isn't horribly overscale (although it is a little soft in detail). It also comes with the blast shield, which is an unexpected but happy bonus:


You can see the problem with the older Bofors on my scratchbuilt Ishikari - putting the 1995 version in the best possible place still means it is partially sitting on the platform extending from the deck, which it shouldn't be doing:


The biggest problem with the sets is that you get so little. The old E-1 set could easily fit out two ships. The NE-10 set will generally upgrade a single ship. The NE-11 is even worse. For example, it only comes with one open 3in gun mount - you may need to buy two or even three whole sets to upgrade a single ship. It's also more complicated. The Sea Sparrow launcher is now 5 parts and the ASROC is 7 for little gain in detail.

But once you see how nice these parts are, you need to get them.

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"Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I've got some good news and some bad news." - Cave Johnson, Portal 2

Thank you very much for the review!

Are all the new parts really in 1/700? In the older sets many parts were too large. As you showed in case of the Bofors launcher, this creates problems. But there are still aftermarket producers, who make the parts too large to be able to detail them more. Then the parts look impressive - but the built model looks idiotic, because the dimensions of these parts and the ship do not fit to each other.

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Thanks for posting. Great side-by-side comparison.

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-- Scott